Tag: Experience

OpenSignal Reports: Who is the Best Cellular Provider?

OpenSignal has released their collection of data from cellular providers over the dates of September 16 to December 14 of 2022. It will be no surprise to some of us that in these cellular reports, T-Mobile has won out above the rest, yet again. 

On the mobile network experience report, multiple factors were tested. For overall experience, the cellular report included video, games, voice app, download speed, and upload speed. For coverage, they checked availability across the providers. Lastly, they checked for consistency in excellent quality and core quality. 

Experience and coverage might make sense, but what about consistency? Per OpenSignal, “Consistent Quality measures how often users’ experience on a network was sufficient to support common applications’ requirements. It measures download speed, upload speed, latency, jitter, packet loss, time to first byte and the percentage of tests attempted which did not succeed due to a connectivity issue on either the download or server response component.”

Core Consistent Quality represents common, but less demanding use cases such as SD video streaming, web browsing, and email use. Excellent Consistent Quality is designed for higher quality applications such as live video streaming and streaming video games. See how Consistent quality metrics are calculated here.

The only awards that T-Mobile did not take was in the Availability section. That award goes to the previous champion, AT&T. AT&T and Verizon were only 0.2 percentage points away from each other. T-Mobile came up last with a score of 98%.

OpenSignal’s 5G Experience Report awards were a bit of a toss up between Verizon and T-Mobile. The UnCarrier took a slight lead by winning in 4 categories (download and upload speeds, as well as availability and reach), versus Verizon’s 3 (Video, Games, and Voice app experiences). Much like the mobile network experience report, the 5G cellular report tests the same categories, but with 5G specifically, and less the consistency awards. Instead, in coverage, they checked both availability and reach.

Experience awards were all quite close, with Verizon just barely winning out over T-Mobile. The only exception being 5G download speeds. T-Mobile was the clear winner here, topping out at 186.3 Mbps versus 84.9 Mbps from Verizon and 71.1 Mbps from AT&T. Regarding coverage and 5G Availability, T-Mobile won again with a far lead of 30% over its closest competitor, AT&T. 

Per OpenSignal, “5G Reach measures the 5G mobile experience in all the locations that matter most to everyday users – i.e. all the places where they live, work and travel. 5G Reach for each operator is measured on a scale from 0 to 10.” The results were a bit closer on this one. With a score of 8.3, T-Mobile had a little over a 2 point lead ahead of AT&T and about 4 points from Verizon.  

Something to keep in mind when reviewing the results for yourself – tests were done at the national and regional level. While T-Mobile may be the majority winner, take note of the winners in your state. You may find a different provider is more appropriate.

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How Important is Latency to 5G Users?

According to Ericsson, user experience is all about “time-to-content” – in other words, how fast does my video start or my webpage load after I click to open it? Based on a study the company recently conducted, they found that latency is rarely a factor when it comes to user satisfaction. 

Reiner Ludwig, Strategic Product Manager in the Business Area Networks at Ericsson wrote a blog on just this – “Latency hardly impacts smartphone user experience in advanced 5G and 4G networks.”

In describing the study, Ludwig says they used high-end smartphones in a controlled environment. These were all requesting popular content (YouTube, Instagram, Amazon, eBay, Uber, etc) in an automated way. 

“For the latency measurements, we have ensured that sufficient up- and download speeds were available to the devices at all times: an uplink throughput “at click” of at least 1 Mbps and a downlink throughput “at click” of at least 20 Mbps,” he said. 

Tools and guidelines for the study were provided by Google on web.dev. This allowed them to see the relationship between time-to-content and latency, and time-to-content and up- and download speeds.

What is Latency?

Ludwig describes latency as the time it takes for a device to send one small ‘echo’ packet to the serving content server and the corresponding ‘echo-reply’ packet to return to the device. This period of time is also called the round-trip time. 

What isn’t latency? It’s NOT the same as time-to-content. This is where many people tend to misunderstand. 

Where is Low Latency Most Helpful? 

While low latency is important to online gamers, it’s more crucial for machines. 

“Machines, not humans, can benefit from the ultra-low and ultra-reliable latencies that only 5G can provide. For example, think about video-controlled high-precision robots in a smart factory. Here, you might see latencies below 10 ms, i.e., ultra-low, and without latency spikes exceeding 10 ms, i.e., ultra-reliable. Meeting these tough requirements is one of the key drivers behind Ericsson’s launch of a new product offering targeted at Time-Critical Communication,” says Ludwig.

Surprisingly, us humans are hardly able to tell the difference between 30 and 50ms of latency. Ludwig explains that 5G and 4G latency in the U.S. is usually less than 50 ms. This came from a 6 month analysis of Ookla’s speed test results, which were gathered from all across the U.S.

The takeaway here is that 5G (human) user experience is determined by speed, not much by latency. However, Ludwig admits, “Once 5G use cases such as virtual and augmented reality become mainstream, some aspects might need to be revisited.”

To view Ludwig’s blog in its entirety, see here.

 

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What is the Current 5G Experience in the U.S?

Over the course of 3 months (Mar 16 – Jun 13, 2022), OpenSignal gathered 5G data points from each of the major U.S. cellular carriers – Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. This data was put into a report they call the 5G Experience Report, and it was just released. Big surprise…it shows T-Mobile as the winner in most categories. Check out the overall results below.

Taking a closer look, each category was analyzed at the national and regional levels. T-Mobile won with Download speeds over 98Mbps faster than Verizon and AT&T. Overall, the total was 171Mbps. This is T-Mobile’s sixth win in a row. The Upload speed tests were a bit closer, with only a 3Mbps difference between T-Mobile and Verizon. T-Mobile’s total was 17.8Mbps, and again, this was their sixth time in a row to win this category. Verizon and AT&T customers may still want to be hopeful though. They are the only two carriers that are using C-Band deployments. As these deployments increase, we suspect these reports may change. Still, T-Mobile has quite a lead.

Not only do T-Mobile customers receive the best overall speeds, but they can also access them in more places than other carriers’ networks. OpenSignal confirms this by awarding T-Mobile with the best 5G Reach. The report also confirms that T-Mobile has the best 5G Availability. It shows that T-Mobile customers were connected to 5G 2 times more often than AT&T customers, and over 3 times more often than Verizon customers.

With regards to testing 5G Games experience and Voice App experience, the point scale was 0 to 100. This is where Verizon won out against the others, but all were within a small margin. 

According to OpenSignal, “a good Games experience means that the gameplay experience was generally controllable and users received immediate feedback between their actions and the outcomes in the game. Most users did not experience a delay between their actions and the game.”

You may also be wondering what qualifies a good 5G Voice App Experience too. These tests “quantify the experience of Opensignal users when using over-the-top voice apps — such as WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger — on an operator’s 5G network. It uses a model derived from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) approach for quantifying overall voice call quality and a series of calibrated technical parameters. This model characterizes the exact relationship between the technical measurements and perceived call quality.”

Want to know more about OpenSignal’s metrics and what they mean? Check out their article here.

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T-Mobile Comes Out on Top of OpenSignal’s Latest Report

OpenSignal is known for its mobile analytics. Each year they release a few reports about the major cellular carriers’ networks. They take results gathered from millions of devices, which result in billions of measurements. The latest data gathered, which was collected between September and December of last year, shows T-Mobile is on top once again. 

Analysis was done in 43 states, as well as the capital of Washington, D.C., for each of the carriers strictly on their 5G network experience. The report covered: Availability, Reach, Games Experience, Voice App Experience, Download Speed and Upload Speed. 

T-Mobile was not the only winner though. Verizon also picked up the categories of Games Experience and Voice App Experience. Sadly, for AT&T, they didn’t win any categories, but still presented good results in comparison to its competitors. It’s no wonder given that T-Mobile has not had to deal with the issues surrounding C-Band that AT&T and Verizon have. This service was originally delayed, then limited to certain locations – all because of possible interference with aircraft tools that also work around the C-Band spectrum. 

While Verizon has the best user experience, T-Mobile dominates the speed categories. In fact, they’ve been at the top of the Download Speed category for six times in a row and Upload Speeds for the fifth time in a row. 

T-Mobile also won the Availability and Reach categories. It’s clear their lead on getting mid-band service out to 200 million users was a success. This is what they have dubbed their “Ultra Capacity 5G” service. It relies on the 2.5 Ghz band, so it is unaffected by the FAA concerns that have affected the C-Band. 

Now let’s take a closer look at how all the carriers fared in each category, at the National Analysis level. 

Note that each of the OpenSignal charts listed below have brackets at the end of their respective graphs. These brackets represent confidence intervals. Per OpenSignal, “For every metric we calculate statistical confidence intervals indicated on our graphs. When confidence intervals overlap, our measured results are too close to declare a winner. In those cases, we show a statistical draw. For this reason, some metrics have multiple operator winners. In our bar graphs we represent confidence intervals as boundaries on either sides of graph bars. In our supporting-metric charts we show confidence intervals as +/- numerical values.”

  1. 5G Availability

“Opensignal’s 5G Availability compares the amount of time 5G users spent with an active 5G connection — the higher the percentage, the more time that users on a network were actually connected to 5G.”

The brackets |-| represent confidence intervals.
  1. 5G Reach

“5G Reach represents the proportion of locations where 5G users have connected to 5G out of all the locations those users have visited, on a scale of 0-10. This measure complements our existing 5G Availability metric, which represents the proportion of time 5G users spent connected to 5G.”

The brackets |-| represent confidence intervals.
  1. 5G Games Experience

“Opensignal’s 5G Games Experience measures how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on an operator’s 5G network. Measured on a scale of 0-100, it analyzes how the multiplayer mobile gaming experience is affected by mobile network conditions including latency, packet loss and jitter.”

The brackets |-| represent confidence intervals.
  1. 5G Voice App Experience

“Opensignal’s 5G Voice App Experience measures the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services — mobile voice apps such as WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook Messenger etc. — when users are connected to a 5G network.”

The brackets |-| represent confidence intervals.
  1. 5G Download Speed

“T-Mobile’s 5G Download Speed continues on its upward trend as our users on the carrier now clock average speeds of 150 Mbps, up from 118.7 Mbps in the previous report. A year ago, using T-Mobile our users saw a 5G Download Speed score of 58.1 Mbps, but it has consistently increased since then due to T-Mobile’s ongoing deployment of 2.5 GHz spectrum. The carrier has been increasing both its population coverage, as well as the amount of spectrum deployed on that band.”

The brackets |-| represent confidence intervals.
  1. 5G Upload Speed

“T-Mobile keeps hold of the 5G Upload Speed award with a score of 17.9 Mbps, which is 1.8 Mbps faster than what our users observed in our October report. Verizon places second in 5G Upload Speed with a score of 14.1 Mbps, which represents a 0.3 Mbps decrease from our previous report, while AT&T’s score increased from 9.7 Mbps to 9.9 Mbps.”

The brackets |-| represent confidence intervals.

Analysis was also done at the regional level, which you’ll see outlined below.

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